Eidolon (Chapter 30)
Sunday, June 10, 2012
He'd have to depend on Jayne. "I'm going after them. Get everything back to Serenity," he ordered. Something had gone wrong, as usual. But there was one thing he could ensure, and damned if he didn't. (Heroics)
CATEGORY: FICTION TIMES READ: 3840 RATING: 10.0 (G) SERIES: FIREFLY
The Alliance labcoat inspected the boxes on the shelves, each in turn, the storeroom lit up as brightly as the hall outside. Soon as the selection was only just set out on the counter, the low thrum of a pressure wave gave a hello from off to the side, and the medic dropped, out cold. Captain Reynolds rose from where he was crouched between some crates. No sympathy for the headache the man would have. Mal might've been wearing stolen colours now, the black and purple uniform of a marine Federal, but former and still defiant insurrectionist he was, his hand was itching for his Independents-issued service pistol from the war. Even that might be too good for these folks.
He stepped over the self-righteous fallen, plunked the sonic rifle down as he pulled out his army knife and a radio handset from a pocket in the tactical vest. "Diazepam," Mal read off, and broke the packaging seal, pulled out a vial of unhealthy looking pale yellow. "This the right medicine?" he asked, doubtful.
A burst of static. " Diazepam ," his own fugitive doctor mused, and Mal could just see the boy's thoughtful frown. " But that's a sedative ."
And that would be no help for Inara. He put the glass back, and considered his informant, sprawled out limp and lying at his feet. Some plaything, tossed aside and abandoned. Young, gangly, mousy haired, lightweight. Easy to hoist up against the trestles, hang him with some engineering tape by the wrists, the ankles. Wheezing around a cinched garrote. Less like the expected monster. Maybe even a real human being.
"We always treated the wounded," Mal commented idly as the charlatan stirred in discomfort, looked around dizzily. Then the Alliance doctor saw him, and jerked alert, though he at least had the sense to not tug on the bondage and bring the whole shelving unit down on him. "Wasn't that we were fighting against your soldiers - that was more about survival. We just had all these values and principles, an
I enjoyed the interaction between Mal and Jayne the most. I love it when Jayne's allowed a bit of humanity :)
But Mal - Mal just had to not make it back...
I wasn't really thinking of much in particular beyond a vaguely middle-eastern seeming world and society and some sort of hybrid predominantly Islamic religion where they call upon Allah, and have a lot of star and crescent motifs, and they also use the cross as a symbol as much as more overtly Islamic traditions.
And I guess I also wanted to skirt around some subversive political messages that deal with what I think about invasions and occupations. While writing a Firefly story. If I'd had the time and the determination and the know-how, it would have been fun to expand those themes and the minor characters into something more like Les Miserables.
Jayne and Mal both get to be heroes here. In an action movie, there would have been a nice over-the-top shot of Jayne driving away from the explosion, maybe flicking his cigar out the window as though that spark had ignited it.
He also ignored Mal's orders to leave him behind as long as he could, though not without setting up his own distraction and escape plan. So yeah, Jayne is still crude as ever and doesn't always follow any subtleties in a conversation, but every now and then I like to show that while he doesn't have traditional smarts, he does have street smarts and a crafty side. Or maybe just paranoia that everyone is really as greedy and self-serving as he often is and therefore not to be trusted. Either way, they served him well here.
Yes, Mal kind of makes himself into a martyr sometimes.
About Jayne: he almost had me convinced here that he would make a better captain than Mal. Which is hilarious enough in itself. But then again...some of his judgments do strike home.
Yeah, we've both got him martyring himself - in mine, doing the equivalent of scrubbing the latrines with a toothbrush, in yours the Derring Do. He Does the Derring so well, it really would be a shame for him to go off and so something like - um - preaching.
About Jayne: he almost had me convinced here that he would make a better captain than Mal. Which is hilarious enough in itself. But then again...some of his judgments do strike home.
Yeah, we've both got him martyring himself - in mine, doing the equivalent of scrubbing the latrines with a toothbrush, in yours the Derring Do. He Does the Derring so well, it really would be a shame for him to go off and so something like - um - preaching.
Syria's pretty bad. I can't say I've been following it closely - generally in cases such as this, I can guess at what all is happening, and I don't really need to confirm it to know it's happening. I suspect Syria is actually probably quite a bit worse - at least here the Alliance can claim lack of knowing, incompetence, and scientific interest more than outright malice and torture.
Jayne actually does make good points. The crew of Serenity are uncommonly skilled, but Mal has them running train robberies and bank heists and ferry missions. To be fair to Mal though, it's probably more he doesn't want to put any of his particularly skilled people in danger and doesn't want to risk capture in connection to a high-profile theft that he doesn't really use his people to their full potential.
On the other hand, Jayne is a lot less scrupulous, which in the right circumstances that would drive Jayne to make a profit when Mal might've turned away because he had a pang of conscience. But then again, Jayne's lack of scruples would also probably make them more enemies, and considering how many enemies Mal already makes for himself, that's saying something.
I think the preacher idea is great! If I weren't doing something else, I'd try to steal it.
The problem with Mal's derring do is that it tends to carry a lot of possibility that he might not live to perform more derring do. Or as I prefer to think of them, near suicidal pleas for attention and approval. Mal is one heck of a sympathetically messed up tragedy. He's kind of a mess of psychological complexes at this point.
Yep. Big trouble.
"You can't take the sky from me!"
I haven't been entirely fair to Mal in these comments, because even though I disagree with his martyr tendencies, what he does here is actually very impressive, and while he's aware of the more serious ramification of what will happen to him, he's willing to go through with it anyway and doesn't think twice about going back for people instead of leaving them behind.
I wouldn't call it particularly SMART, but it is heroic. This is why Mal is a hero.
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